January 14, 2011

My dearest,

Mummies and pterodactyls.

That was what the DVD cover promised us. We had missed this movie in the theatres a couple of months ago; sometimes there just doesn’t seem to be time nor inclination to go to a cinema thronging with hundreds of other people, loud and carrying boxes of popcorn several sizes too large.

But now it was on DVD. ‘Adele: The Rise of the Mummy’, it promised. Horror-fantasy, from the looks of it. Oh yawn. Still, a movie night is a movie night. A couple of extra pillows to block out the scary parts and we are good to go.

Turns out, horror-fantasy not so much. More of madcap comedy set in the Paris of the early 1900’s. Tintin as a beautiful French journalist cum world adventuress and that’s probably closer. We discover, later, that the film’s original title is really ‘Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec’ (‘The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec’) so we really got more of Mademoiselle Blanc-Sec than we did mummies and pterodactyls. Which is not a bad thing.

For instead of waiting for cheap shocks and recycled thriller plots, we are laughing and screaming in astonishment. This is so ridiculous, one of us says. It’s horrible, the other adds, but hilarious! Genuine surprise. We have almost forgotten what that feels like. We are kids again. Almost forgotten what this feels like too.

I cradle your head on my shoulder and we lean against each other. Better than a reupholstered cinema seat – there’s no stray popcorn flying in the air or kids screaming to go home cos it’s past their bedtime. There’s only the two of us and we are laughing and we are leaning closer and closer and this is the joy mummies and pterodactyls can bring to our home.

We never knew.

Yours, ever and always.